The Road Less Traveled

Obstacles Didn't Stop Suffolk Doctor

She can capture your attention for hours with narratives about excursions to Africa or the joys of looking up at the Swiss Alps, but travel is just one aspect of her amazing life.

Margaret W. Reid, a Suffolk resident for over 40 years, earned her medical degree in 1944 from Meharry Medical School in Nashville; a task somewhat difficult for a black woman during that time.

Her father was also a Meharry graduate, "so I didn't think about doing anything else.

"There were six girls in my class. It was the largest to graduate. Our problem - my problem - wasn't the racism, it was the chauvinism of some teachers. Some of the men told us we should be at home in the kitchen. I wasn't accustomed to chauvinistic behavior, Reid says."

She admits that her father, a doctor, was able to shield her from some of the hardships of being black.

"I didn't run into sitting in the back of the streetcar; I had my daddy's car."

Attending church-run boarding schools gave her other advantages. "There was always a nice, loving, warm environment. That's how I escaped a lot of the things other people didn't. Oh, I knew we were black though."

An incident from her youth particularly sticks out in her mind. "I was walking home from school and another child called me a nigger."

However, she didn't let color keep her from traveling.

Reid took her first trip to Africa in 1952, after visiting her husband who was stationed in Germany.

"He'd go on maneuvers and I'd go to Africa," she says.

"It was very modern. From the books and movies, you'd think everyone ran around with bones in their noses."

She made pilgrimages to Africa two or three times a year after this, visiting several parts of the continent, and often traveling to other countries such as South America.

It was easier then, she says, for a woman to travel alone without worrying.

"I never had anyone accost me or hurt me or anything while on my travels. That only happens in Washington, D.C., or New York."

When the couple returned to Suffolk, Reid worked briefly at Obici Hospital. "That's where the discrimination was - on the hospital staff. They had a south wing for blacks only. As a black physician, you could only treat black patients on the south wing. White physicians could treat both," Reid says.

"I don't know how it is now, but there were very subtle discrimination practices in admissions. They would put whites in the south wing with white roommates, but they wouldn't put blacks anywhere else."

The Reids eventually opened their own practice. Married during her first year in medical school, the couple worked long hours and often had patients come to their home for treatment after business hours.

"We worked six days a week - we couldn't get any peace. Then we started to take every Tuesday off to rest."

She says her husband delivered his third and fourth generation by the time the couple retired in 1983. "I only did those deliveries I couldn't get out of," she says wrinkling her nose.

Reid, 71, still sees some of her patients around town who have grown up and raised their own children.

"Suffolk has been very good to us. I have no complaints." However, coming from larger Savannah, Ga., she felt Suffolk's smallness a little stifling at first. "The only way I really survived was the airport. I called it the Great Escape."

Her desire to know more about the world kept her on the go. She says today's youth need to cultivate their curiosity instead of concentrating on self-destructive behavior.

"I don't envy you - your youth. The eyes of young people today have no imagination, no light, no curiosity. It's painful to see what's happening to us - black people."

Reid believes things will get better only as young people take pride in themselves and "deal with life as it comes" instead of trying to rush it.

Although repeated bouts with illness have curtailed some of her activities, she still makes time for a children's group and for friends.

As for traveling:

"My husband laughs at me, but I'm going to go ballooning in Paris one day," she says smiling.